Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The tide has turned. The sprawling, cross-universal threat
has apparently met its match for the first time with the squeaky-clean Marvel
family of Earth-5 flying off in victory at the end of Thunderworld, the fourth of five one-shots issues devoted to a
single Earth. Between the first three issues ending on a distinctly dark note,
and the upcoming finale known to be a happy ending, we see Captain Marvel and
his allies turn back the Multiversal threat issued by his old nemesis, Thaddeus
Bodog Sivana.

Far less complex than Pax Americana, the previous issue of Multiversity,
Thunderworld nevertheless shows off
Morrison’s tremendous gift of adopting someone else’s style, and putting his
own twists on it. Thunderworld is,
most of the time, admirably faithful to the old-style Fawcett Comics tales of
Captain Marvel, which were themselves imitated in new stories published by DC
in the Seventies.

The history of the Marvel feature is relevant to Morrison’s
work here: Captain Marvel was the top-selling character for most of his history
from 1940 until 1953, when a lawsuit by DC forced Fawcett to cease publishing
the character, deemed by the court to be a violation of the copyrights on
Superman. In 1973, DC licensed the characters from Fawcett and began publishing
both old and new stories in a series that spitefully put Superman on the cover
of the first issue (which happened to be one of the first comic books that I ever
bought). To explain the long hiatus of the Marvel family, the first new story
explained that Sivana had used an invention, Suspendium, to freeze time for the
Marvels so that they were out of action for 20 years, awaking in 1973 to begin
their adventures anew. Suspendium is quite similar to the plot device used to
explain why Captain America was similarly out of publication for a decade, but
rendered in terms of science fiction. Morrison has used Suspendium in 52, and his use of it here is one of
only several nods in this issue to 52.

Morrison begins the story with Fourth Wall narration, the
wizard Shazam comedically realizing that the reader is listening to him. As Multiversity began and will end with
Fourth Wall narration, this is one way of weaving the issue into his larger
structure.

An important motif in the old-time Captain Marvel stories
that Morrison has used in his other works as well as here is the endless
invention of variant characters. Captain Marvel’s universe was always populated
with an entire roster of alternative versions of himself: a girl version of
him, a younger version of him, fat, tall, and “hillbilly” versions of him, and
more than one evil version of him. Morrison keeps the ball rolling by turning
the Sivana children into evil Marvels before turning himself into a Sivana
version of Black Adam who was himself an alternate version of Captain Marvel. The
overall effect is like a department store mirror that allows one to see reflections
of reflections iterating off into infinity.

The pivotal alternate-version in this issue is the alternate
Rock of Eternity, which was shown in the Map of the Multiverse issues before
the series began. Sivana’s plot is as follows: having discovered the Multiverse
by tracking the source of Captain Marvel’s lightning, he learns through comic
books about how it works. He gathers Suspendium from other universe to give
himself an extra day of the week, Sivanaday, one in which he can win. After
besieging the Rock of Eternity and imprisoning the wizard Shazam, he uses his
alternate Rock of Eternity, one favoring science (it is covered with blinking
lights and circuit diagrams) rather than magic, to make him and his family (the
latter, as guinea pigs) as powerful as the Marvels, so that he can vanquish
Captain Marvel at last.

Sivana will then rule the Multiverse along with all of the alternate
Sivanas, who are initially portrayed as a delightful array of amusing variants
on the original, one of many great displays by artist Cameron Stewart, whose
talents are perfectly matched to the Marvel world. But by the issue’s end, the
alternate Sivanas become dark, disturbing even the original Sivana. This is emphasized
by two Sivanas who bookend the continuity of darkness: One is merely a
scientist with “personal problems” who is aghast that most of the Sivanas are
criminals. The other, at the far extreme of evil, is a serial killer, masked
like Hannibal Lecter and dripping with blood, who has killed his own universe’s
version of Captain Marvel, and wants to torture and kill more Marvels.

This is one of several cracks that appear in the otherwise squeaky-clean
facade of the tale. The first is when someone notes that Billy Batson’s job as
a reporter apparently violates child labor laws. Another is when Georgia Sivana
flaunts her sexy curves in a low-cut top, a la Power Girl, beckoning Captain
Marvel Junior to ogle her, to the dismay of Mary Marvel. This has overtones of
the corrupting influence we’ve seen in earlier issues of Multiversity – the heroes who kill in Society of Super-Heroes, and the trauma felt by Kyle Rayner in The Just. But Freddy Freeman has read SOS, and it’s all a ruse. He uses the
ogling to trick her into saying her name, a la Mr. Mxyzptlk, to take away her
powers.

Another suggestion of Multiversal corruption bringing
darkness to Earth-5 is in the appearance of the Monster Society of Evil, who
appear vastly more evil than their original forms. Instead of the adorable,
bug-eyed Mr. Mind, we see the legitimately hideous insect that is the central,
secret villain of 52. Alongside more-evil-looking
versions of Ibac, the robot Mister Atom, and others, we see a huge,
Godzilla-like crocodile who appears to be Thunderworld’s
version of Herkimer. The original Herkimer was a silly-looking man with a
crocodile head, but this one resembles Sobek, the crocodile-man who suddenly revealed
his murderous side in 52, setting
Black Adam on a path of vengeance and genocide.

What saves the day is a time loop, a device that Morrison
has used in Seven Soldiers, Final Crisis, Pax Americana, and now here. Billy Batson raids Sivana’s cache of
Suspendium to go back to the beginning of Sivanaday and give himself a warning.
Telling himself to watch the Sun (the artwork shows that a whole day-night
cycle takes place in what should be only a few minutes) and watch clocks to see
that Sivanaday is unusually short, because the alternate Sivanas cheated the
original, giving him less time than he thought. As soon as he wins, Sivanaday
ends, and Captain Marvel wins when the world goes back to normal time.

And so, this is the first issue of Multiversity with a happy ending. But perhaps that’s just a matter
of tone. The issue ends with pending threats from Parallax and Niczhuotan from SOS as well as the serial killer Sivana,
who now has his eye on Mary Marvel. These are perhaps no less real than the
threats that conclude the series’ earlier issues, but the Marvels are simply
unconcerned. They know that they’ll face them, and they know that they’ll win.

If this sets the tone for Multiversity as a whole, then we don’t need to wait for a sudden
180° turn that gives the heroes a victory in the final issue. The dark endings
of Multiversity #1, SOS, and The Just gave way to an ambiguous ending for Pax Americana (depending on whether or not Captain Atom will return
to resurrect President Harley), and now a light turn here. Instead of a good
world turned bad, corrupted by the sex and violence of post-1986 comics, we
have a world that witnesses some of those themes but remains intact. The next
issue that is devoted to one Earth will be Mastermen,
in which a Nazi world is eventually set right. And we can see now that Multiversity has an ornate structure: It
is not simply one long arc with initial tragedy turning to a happy ending in
the finale, but a hierarchical structure with the changes in fortune turning
dark in the first issues, but becoming less so with successive issues. Thunderworld ends with a new dawn. Mastermen will end with the defeat of
Fascism. Whatever darkness the Gentry represent, Morrison sees the light beyond
them.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Dark Knight
Returns, Watchmen, and a few
other works of their time showed that the superhero genre and the comic book
medium could be raised to a higher level of artistic expression. Neil Gaiman's Sandman realized that potential perhaps further
than any work before or since. Although conceived, named, and published like a
superhero comic, Sandman was something
else, something more. It attracted readers who were never interested in
superheroes, and arguably stands still as the high-water mark of the medium.

The central character is referred to as Sandman only rarely,
is sometimes called Dream – in Gaiman’s formulation of seven siblings known as
the Endless – and in a nod to Classical mythology, is most often called Morpheus.
In this threefold naming alone, Gaiman shows his power to blend DC superhero
continuity, established cultural and literary tradition, and his own
inventions. As the series goes on, Gaiman also weaves literature, history,
current events, pop culture, science, and science fiction into his story, and it
is his ability to draw on such a vast number of subjects that makes Neil Gaiman
himself perhaps the most fascinating character of the series. Gaiman has an
expansive world in his mind and his ability to draw upon such a vast array of
sources makes Sandman a richer work
than all but the rarest literature. The reader is invited to research what his
sources and inspirations were, and in the process could inevitably learn a
great deal about such wildly different topics as the French Revolution, the
history of Baghdad, and demonology and the occult. One of the series’ most
remarkable issues is devoted to an exploration of mortuary science, with Gaiman
inventing an entire society devoted to funerary preparation. There is simply
more effort evident in most issues of Sandman
than almost any issue of almost any other series; time and time again, Gaiman
pulls off the challenge masterfully, delivering one fascinating story after
another.

Structurally, the series' 75 issues tell one long story,
with many coherent tales of several issues each woven together with many
one-issue tales. The larger arc is that of Morpheus' downfall, beginning with a
decades-long imprisonment at the hand of some English occultists, and a complex
story, after he regains his freedom, in which he provokes several of his old
enemies and gains a few new ones. Many characters on Earth and other realms are
sent reeling into tragedies and triumphs of their own as byproducts of
Morpheus' own struggles. The plot is ornate and interconnected, with minor
cameos early sometimes spinning off into maxi-arcs of eight issues.

Sandman diverges
from the superhero genre so early and often that listing the ways in which it
breaks from tradition is dizzying, but elucidates both Sandman and the works that came before it. Morpheus is not a hero.
He feels a duty to the unique office that he holds, but he is motivated to
maintain order, not to utilize his considerable power to eliminate suffering.
And there is much suffering in Sandman.
There is an astonishing number of murders, rapes, and other acts of cruelty in Sandman, many of which go unavenged. But
one of the best characteristics of Sandman
is that Gaiman is driven neither to uphold nor mindlessly reject tradition: He
does protect the innocent and avenge injustice when the situation and his
well-developed character demand that he behave that way. Morpheus is mindful of
justice, and at times delivers it, but follows his own motives in each
situation, whether this means that he behaves as a hero or watches a crime with
total indifference.

While not a cruel being, Morpheus is selfish, and his own
shortcomings accumulate throughout the story until they help bring about his
undoing. This larger pattern of Greek tragedy is one of Sandman’s finest homages to literary tradition. Misstep by misstep,
Morpheus allows his enemies to move against him, and the series’ largest act of
justice is that the title character himself ultimately pays for his many sins
with his own destruction. And yet, the reader feels compassion for him, even as
some of the smallest and most trivial acts of carelessness on his part become
the most fatal. After eons in which Morpheus selfishly allowed others to be
destroyed, he is ultimately doomed by at least three acts of kindness and
obligation, and blamed for at least one crime that he did not commit. A reader
cannot read this and not feel; those feelings are frequently beautiful, and
frequently painful.

In one of many ways it broke from established tradition, it
ran for a finite length and despite commercial and critical success, ended when
the writer reached, from a creative standpoint, an ending. Possessing a
definite ending is one of several characteristics that Sandman holds in common with other groundbreaking works of its
decade. However, while works such as Waid and Ross’ Kingdom Come,Watchman,
and other works by Alan Moore show a dark hollowness to superheroes, Sandman neither affirms nor rejects the
genre. He follows a course that draws upon worlds of science fiction, myth,
literature, history, folklore, dark magic, and – at times – superheroes. He is steadfast
neither in embracing the superhero genre nor rejecting it.

Gaiman uses the Garrett Sanford and Hector Hall Sandmen as
symbols of the superhero genre gone wrong, too trite to stand up to the grim
realities of his larger story. But he also uses the Bizarro concept from
Superman comics as a genuinely meaningful inspiration for a transsexual character,
and it says much that an observer as gifted in his breadth as Gaiman find a
superhero story to be worthy of such a mention. Late in the series, Superman,
Batman, the Martian Manhunter, and Wesley Dodds return in minor appearances,
affirming that Gaiman never forgot where the creative inspiration for Sandman began. Another comic book
inspiration is from House of Mystery / House of Secrets: Gaiman gives more than
their due to the storytelling characters Cain and Abel and their associates,
brilliantly capturing the dark comedy of the original series, which was itself
a world under the DC title that, like Gaiman's work, sometimes crossed over
with that of the superheroes, but never matched it in tone.

For me, Sandman is
a story of the fall, both a fall in the sense of the ruin of its central
character, and the autumn, when night comes early. For its expansive scope, its
take on familiar characters, and its tone appropriate to the autumn season, I
feel its call every year, and will surely return to read it in its entirety many,
many times.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Neil Gaiman's Sandman
begins in the DC Universe of its time, the post-Crisis DC Universe with a huge
roster of characters and history going back decades. Although the tone of
Gaiman's work is very distinct from mainstream superhero comics, he makes many
references to DC continuity, from the Golden Age, up through the mystery-themed
comics of the Seventies, and up to his present, including the idiosyncratic
Justice League of that time.

Because Sandman
attracted many readers who did not otherwise read comic books, an annotation
explaining references to DC superheroes is probably useful for many of Gaiman's
fans. Here, I give an issue-by-issue breakdown of references to DC continuity
throughout the Sandman series and hope that they are useful to Gaiman fans who might otherwise be disoriented by the obscure references to DC lore.

One sees that after many references to DC superheroes in the
first third or so of the series, there are far fewer after that, until a few
superhero cameos in the last few issues.

Sandman Superhero Annotations

Background: In 1939, Sandman, one of the first comic book
superheroes, debuted. Like Batman, he was a rich man who dressed up in a
costume to fight crime, primarily at night. This Sandman, real name Wesley
Dodds, was never as popular as Batman, and the character went out of
publication after a few years, although he was revived many years later.

A new Sandman, Garrett Sanford, appeared for just a few
issues in the 1970s, with the look of a superhero, but living and acting in a
dimension of dreams rather than the physical world. Hector Hall, the son of the
original Hawkman superhero, took Sanford's place in 1983.

Gaiman's Sandman, also known as Morpheus or simply Dream,
borrows the name and the approximate appearance of the Wesley Dodds version of
the superhero, but is an immortal supernatural being who predates human
existence and is the ruler of the Dreaming, the realm of dreams. Loosely inspired
by the earlier Sandmen, Morpheus is, in Gaiman's telling, the real Sandman, and the others are
explained as temporary human spinoffs inspired by him. They all appear in
Gaiman's epic, to varying degrees.

These notes are organized by issue (labeled with a
"#") and, where applicable, page number.

#1

7 Dream's appearance
is like that of the superhero Sandman.

18 The superhero Sandman is shown on the same month as his actual
debut.

#2

Cain, Abel, the House
of Mystery, and the three witches are all DC characters who narrated mystery
stories, alternately grim and comic in tone, which only rarely intersected with
the DC superheroes.

8 Arkham Asylum is
where Batman's mentally ill villains are held.

8 Doctor Destiny is a
Justice League villain who specialized in the ability to control dreams.

9 The Justice League
took away Doctor Destiny's ability to dream in order to neutralize the threat
he presented to them. This drove him insane and gave him a ghastly appearance.

21 John Constantine
has magical powers.

21 We see two Justice
League members, Green Lantern and Batman.

#3

7 Superman

9 The big, green
bloke is Swamp Thing, a plant-man hybrid of great power.

#4

Etrigan is a demon who is bound to the body of a man, Jason
Blood.

19 Anti-life is the goal of the evil god-like character,
Darkseid of Apokolips.

#5

3 Doctor Jonathan
Crane is Batman's villain the Scarecrow.

5 Granny Goodness is
one of the evil gods under Darkseid.

7 Scott Free is
Mister Miracle of the New Gods, the good counterparts to Darkseid. He was at
this time a member of the Justice League.

13 Doctor Destiny
altered gravity and posed as Green Lantern.

14 J'onn J'onzz, the
Manhunter from Mars, is a Justice League member.

#7

23 Mister Dent is the
Batman villain Two Face.

#11

Matthew Cable was a
character in Swamp Thing who died. Here, he has been resurrected as a raven.

#12

Hector Hall is the
son of the Golden Age Hawkman, later a new Sandman

Lyta Trevor is the
daughter of the Golden Age Wonder Woman

Sanford was yet
another, short-lived, DC Sandman.

#13

Johanna Constantine, appearing
here for the first time, is the ancestor of John Constantine.

#16

23 Destiny has appeared
as an immortal force of nature in DC comics since 1972. Gaiman uses this existing
character as one of the seven Endless, the other six being original Gaiman
inventions.

#20

Urania Blackwell, Element Girl, is the female counterpart of
Metamorpho. Like him, she can transform her body into any element at will.

#22

12 Steve Trevor is
the traditional boyfriend of Wonder Woman.

#24

19 Eve, like Cain and
Abel, narrated DC mystery titles.

#26

15 The Wesley Dodds Sandman is seen fighting in an eternal
battle between his team, the Justice Society, and Norse gods. This was the premise of a story that wrote the Justice Society out of DC continuity for several years.

#32

17 Hyperman, Lila
Lake, and Weirdzo are named here for the first time as variants on Superman,
Lois Lane, and Bizarro, implying that DC
superheroes are no longer part of the Sandman reality.

18 Now Bizarro is
mentioned. An error?

#33

12 This is the Bizarro
Lois Lane, again.

#36

4 Variants on
Superman (DC) and Spider-Man (Marvel).

#54

Prez was a DC series
in the Seventies.

13 Wildcat (Ted
Grant) is a boxer who became a superhero, debuting in 1942.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

We are still months away from the publication of Ultra Comics, the finale of Grant Morrison's Multiversity mini-series, but we've already seen some five pages'
worth of the material, including the cover. That's a preview of some
considerable length. It takes the form of homages to other stories, so it’s a
lot deeper than a few pages of art, nearly without text, might ordinarily be.
What we see in the previews of Ultra
Comics, in overview, is:

1) A direct and obvious homage to the cover of Flash #163 (seen at right), a cover that
Morrison also referenced in Final Crisis
#2.

2) The title character is from JLA #153. However, his appearance has been altered significantly,
to make him more directly resemble the Flash, Barry Allen.

3) An event which very closely resembles the attempted
murder of Captain Atom in Pax Americana.

The Flash is obviously important to this story, and Morrison
has said so in interviews: Barry Allen read about an alternate Earth in comic
books, then traveled to it, and he’s being homaged in two ways on the cover of Ultra Comics. When we follow the trail
through old Flash comics, we see themes in Multiversity
that reference the old Flash stories that created the DC Multiverse. This in
particular includes:

4) Showcase #4,
the first two panels in the origin of Barry Allen.

5) Flash #123, the
meeting of the two Flashes, “discovering” the Multiverse.

Let’s break these down:

Flash #163: In
this story, the Flash begins to disappear, gradually, from his own world. He is
confronted by a villain who explains that a person’s existence depends upon
other people thinking about them. He has arranged to make everyone in Central
City forget about the Flash, a process that will end in the Flash ceasing to exist,
permanently. Before he is gone, Flash writes a pamphlet about himself and
distributes it around the city at super-speed. With people thinking about him,
he becomes completely real again.

The cover twists this around: The Flash tells the reader that if they don’t
think about him, he will die. But this is actually true: If enough readers
stopped caring about (and buying) the magazine, he would cease to exist, just like Jay Garrick did when his title went
out of print in 1949 (a fact which is referenced in Flash #123).

To highlight Morrison’s awareness of this cover, it was also
referenced in Final Crisis #2, whose
first panel said, "Stop! You must be supercool to proceed! Your life
depends on it!" This is the exact issue whose last panel brought Barry Allen
back from his 22-year death.

JLA #153: Two Multiversity-related things happen in
this story. First, five members of the JLA vanish from Earth-One and appear on
Earth-Prime. This happens because of a (real) poll that asked readers to name
their favorite JLA characters. (Incidentally, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was
the runaway winner.) The power of readers' thoughts on Earth-Prime pulled the
top five vote-getters across dimensions into Earth-One. Later, the Flash takes
them back.

Second, the character Ultraa is introduced. His backstory is
quite a bit like Superman’s, and he becomes the first superhero on Earth-Prime.
Immediately, a super-villain appears who tries to kill him. He defeats the
villain with the help of the JLA members, but he decides that his presence does
more harm than good, so he decides to remove himself from his Earth. He does
this not by committing suicide, but by following the JLA to Earth-One. So,
there is a form of symbolic, but not literal, suicide.

Ultra is different from Ultraa. The name is slightly
changed, but the appearance (see above) greatly so. His costume considerably resembles
Barry Allen’s costume, and is nothing like Ultraa’s original costume. He also ends
up with Barry Allen’s blonde hair instead of Ultraa’s long, flowing red hair
and, like Barry, blue eyes.

The costume design and the way it is originally presented is
very cleverly managed. A frontal view of Ultra's costume only superficially resembles
Barry Allen's. But compare the cover of Flash
#163 with the first panel of Multiversity
#1 that shows Ultra Comics (the two are juxtaposed above). This cropping
of Ultra's costume emphasizes the yellow point on a red field, with the point aimed at the hero's outstretched left hand. The cropping of
that panel and the costume design are intimately related, to create the visual
homage in that panel without giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume exactly. The
original Earth-Prime superhero, Ultraa, has been deliberately transformed into
an Barry Allen look-alike because of Barry Allen's pivotal role in navigating
the Multiverse. We will also see later that Barry Allen, Captain Atom, and
Ultra all seem to commit some sort of suicide / self-sacrifice as the target of
a single particle in a physics-based apparatus for the good of their respective
worlds.

One panel of Ultra Comics (at left) shows Ultra surrounded by tubes of red, yellow, and blue. Is this a transformation giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume, hair, and eyes? Or the primary colors of Superman? This is likely all deliberate. Ultra is changed from his original conception into something else. Something that resembles Superman, and something that resembles the Flash, who speaks to us in the real world before sacrificing himself to save his world. This transformation that Ultra will undergo will be influenced by the comic books in his world. The comic books in his world, Earth-Prime, are the same comic books we know: Superman, the Flash, and the rest of the Justice League.

Something Bad Happens to Ultra

Multiversity: The
artwork in Ultra Comics shows an
event (at right, click to enlarge) which is very similar to the attempted murder of Captain Atom in Multiversity. Ultra stands in front of a
device which is aimed at his forehead. Some high-energy shot hits him, creating
a flash of light, then darkness, centered on his head. Then we see an injured
Ultra in another location, apparently teleported there by the shot. He now has
a white hole in his forehead, and, like the Flash on that famous cover, he
looks at the camera, noticing the audience and apparently speaking to them.
This ends with a close-up of his eye, an image which has come up repeatedly in Multiversity. Somehow, the shot has
teleported him, injured him, and this causes him anguish. The cover of Ultra happens after this. We see him with a tiny bandage
over the point of the injury, and his words tell us something similar to the
Flash’s message in Flash #163. He may
not have realized what that shot would do to him, but he stood and took it
voluntarily, so perhaps he was symbolically murdered, perhaps he committed
suicide.

In The Just,
Megamorpho commits suicide after reading comics, and we eventually see that Ultra Comics is one of those. Her
suicide is presumably triggered by reading about Ultra’s maybe-suicide.

And Captain Atom was reading Ultra Comics right when a black hole was fired into his brain. This
may be exactly what happened to Ultra. Captain Atom was aware this would
happen. Depending upon the outcome, this may amount to a suicide on his part,
although it may also be a failed attempted murder. Ultra's trauma seems to resemble Barry Allen's sacrifice. Later, Megamorpho commits suicide after reading about it, and Captain Atom experiences a murder or suicide or escape also patterned upon it. The symbolic suicide spreading across stories, from Ultraa to Barry Allen in COIE, to Megamorpho and Captain Atom is one of the key examples of a scene being "carried" from one comic book to another.

I predict that we will see this happen in more detail when finally we read Ultra Comics. We will see exactly how a pattern in one story is read about and repeated by someone who reads it. Barry Allen may make an explicit appearance. We may also see scenes in Ultra Comics that predict why Al Pratt kills a man after reading the issue, Kyle Rayner feels the anguish of tragedy, and Alexis Luthor commits a betrayal, probably because these themes occur in other scenes in Ultra Comics. And the happy or at least hopeful ending that we're promised will also spread from one comic book to another. That's where Multiversity is headed.

Barry Allen and the
Multiverse

These references to Barry Allen merit a closer look. The
opening scene of Showcase #4 shows
Barry reading an old story about the Flash, Jay Garrick. In the very first
panel, he refers to Garrick’s “undreamed-of speed.” In the second panel, he
says, “The Flash was just a character some writer dreamed up!” These metaphoric
references to dreams come back six years later as an assertion about literal
dreams. When Barry Allen meets Jay Garrick, he says, apparently referring back
to those two panels:

“A writer named Gardner Fox wrote about your adventures,
which he claimed came to him in dreams. Obviously when Fox was asleep, his mind
was ‘tuned in’ on your vibratory Earth! That explains how he ‘dreamed up’ The
Flash!”

In 1968, Cary Bates gave this an extra twist in the story that created Earth-Prime, making the readers and the characters equally real and equally fictional. When Barry Allen first travels to Earth-Prime, Ultraa’s future
world, in Flash #179, a splash image asserts in a true/false quiz, “Flash is strictly a
fictional character dreamed up for this magazine.” Later, he meets DC editor
Julie Schwartz, who, disbelieving Barry’s story, tells him, “You didn’t have to
dream up that wild story!”

The repeated use of the word and concept "dream"
is curious, something that Gardner Fox and later Cary Bates seemed to recall
and emphasize deliberately even with many years separating these stories.
Morrison gives this concept a key role in Multiversity.

Incidentally, the first time one DC character was presented
as a fictional comic book character in the world of another one was in November
1940, in All-America Comics #20. In that
story, an urban housewife named Ma Hunkel was told by her kids about the comic
book hero Green Lantern. This inspired her to adopt the identity Red Tornado,
which eventually became a part of DC continuity. This began in the feature Scribbly, which was the
semi-autobiography of writer/artist/editor Sheldon Mayer. So the interplay of
real comic book creators and fictional characters becoming real began back
then.

Dreams

These multiple references to dreams and comic books carrying
messages between different Earths in the Multiverse is obviously a crucial
device in Multiversity, and Morrison
also adds drugs to the mix, with both the Luthor of Earth-23 and Captain Atom
being under the influence of some unnamed drugs.

Dreams, however, are invoked by Doc Fate, who says that the
idea of the Transmatter Symphonic Array came to him in a dream (it comes to
Captain Carrot’s world via comic book). Chris Kent is apparently called upon to
realize his potential greatness in a dream: “I fell asleep and it was this whole
ultimate dreams of Superman thing. I dreamed of all the things I'd do if –
well, if there was anything left to do. It was like ' A Chrismas Carol' -– but
with Sandman.” And Kon-El paints a member of the Gentry, the Gray Lady, whom
Intellectron calls Dame Merciless: “She am come in – KOFF – dream! Ugly art am
good!”

Becoming a Bizarro, Kon-El prefers the ugly art of the
Gentry to beautiful art. But is this corruption of his world, to advance their
agenda, or is it a warning from someone doing good, someone who is also trying
to help Doc Fate and assemble the Justice League of the Multiverse?

Dreaming up Reality

In one of DC Comics’ high concepts, Gardner Fox took the
metaphorical sense of dream, imagining something, and turned it back into the
literal sense, asserting that writers are like radio receivers picking up
signals from other dimensions, taking real events from alternate realities and
recording them as stories in their own worlds. Morrison has played with the
same idea, including in Action #9,
which is essentially the first chapter of Multiversity.
The Clark Kent of an unstated world learns of the idea of a tulpa in Tibetan Buddhism: a being or
object brought into actual existence through continued and applied mental
concentration. This is exactly the dynamic from Flash #163. In that story, a villain tries to make Barry Allen
cease to exist by taking him away from others’ minds. In Action #9, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy try to make a superhero start to
exist by thinking about him. Creating and uncreating: Two sides of the same
coin. Perceiving a being from another dimension and making an unreal thing
become real: Two sides of the same coin.

Inasmuch as a black hole could destroy a physical object (an
idea Morrison used in his Seven Soldiers
story about Mister Miracle), Morrison uses it for its capacity to destroy
information. Captain Atom and Ultra may be killed in their own worlds by the
removal of their information. But this makes them appear in some other world.

So, without greatly disguising the fact, Morrison has worlds
communicate with one another through comic books, and borrowing ideas from
decades of Flash comics, so can dreams. Ultra
Comics will bend the ideas of creation, reality, and dimensions. It is set
on Earth-33, the equivalent of Earth-Prime, because it is our world. Morrison
will use the captions of the comic and communication between the reader and the
comic book, with Ultra looking right at us and talking right to us, to make
Ultra real – sort of.

And how does this tie into the larger idea?

Buyer Beware

The cover of Ultra
Comics, and the captions early in Multiversity
#1, warn the reader not to read
them. They assert exactly what the cover of Flash
#163 asserted, but in reverse: They call upon us not to read, and say that “the
world” and “your lives” are at stake rather than the life of the hero.

What happens to those who read it? Nix Uotan is turned vindictive
and evil. Al Pratt abandons his principles, which makes his world vulnerable to
invasion from an evil dimension. Megamorpho commits suicide. Kyle Rayner is
traumatized by his past. Alexis Luthor invites a demonic invasion of her world.
Bad stuff!

But this is all comic book plot. What actually happens?
Earth-20 is ruined by menaces much bigger and sadder and sicker than it can
handle. The comfortable existence of Earth-16 is led to turmoil, decay,
betrayal, and suicide. The peace of Earth-4 is turned to tragedy. The Gentry
are something outside these fictional worlds that wants to make them into
something like itself. Something that ruins fictional worlds. The ultimate
trigger of doom for Earth-20 is when someone spills the blood of an immortal.
Vandal Savage isn’t used because he’s such an important character: He’s used
because comic book characters were originally and inherently all immortal. They never died. The
heroes came back issue after issue. Batman should be about a hundred years old
by now, but he’s as young and spry in Scott Snyder’s stories as he was in Bill
Finger’s. And after a long, long time, around the time that Alan Moore wrote Watchmen, they started to die. One of
the first to die was the one so important to this story and its origins: Barry
Allen. It should be noted that, just as Captain Atom seemed to in Pax Americana, Barry Allen died in a
particle accelerator in Crisis on
Infinite Earths, and Barry Allen sacrificed himself to save his world,
which may turn out to be the same with Captain Atom and Ultra. Watchmen killed off a whole world of
superheroes, and in the intent of its author, tried to kill them all off.

Action #9 begins
to develop Morrison’s use of the idea of ideas affecting reality:

Clark: The whole Superman thing was way too macho and
aggressive anyway ­– we should think up a cartoon character kids can actually
play with.

Lois: On the other hand, everyone will know our names after
this.

Jimmy: They'll steal the idea if we don't sell it.

And so, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy sell the idea, and it turns
into something too macho and aggressive that kills the cartoon characters that
kids can actually play with. The same effect appears on Earths 7, 8, 20, 16,
and 4.

The Gentry's attack moves between fictional worlds. In The Just, we see that it can move
between comics, action movies, and art. Perhaps video games and horror movies,
too. It certainly moves from one comic book to another. Clark Kent told us what
the problem was. Multiversity is
going to show us how the Justice League of the Multiverse can perhaps solve it
and save the day.